Tracking One Man’s Contacts in a City of 8 MillionNew York City’s first confirmed case of Ebola has raised complicated logistical issues of how to trace the possible contacts of an infected patient in a city of more than 8 million people with a sprawling mass transit system and a large population of workers who commute every day from surrounding suburbs and states.
By the time the patient, Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency doctor who had recently returned from Guinea, arrived at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan by ambulance on Thursday, he was seriously ill, officials said. (Doesn't jibe with "only 100.3 temp" currently reported.)
Dr. Spencer complicated the tracing process when he told health officials that just the night before, he had gone bowling in Brooklyn, making the long trip there from his home in Upper Manhattan by subway and then returning in a car hired via the taxi service Uber.
City health officials were suddenly faced with the challenge of finding the right balance between trying to find everyone who might have been exposed and responding to a disease that is transmitted only through direct exposure to bodily fluids.
(big snip)
Dr. Spencer has been isolated in a seventh-floor ward at Bellevue, the city’s main public hospital, that was specially designed to treat highly infectious tuberculosis patients. The unit is locked and guarded, with rooms where health care workers can be decontaminated and cameras can monitor patients remotely.
Feeling Ebola Anxiety, From Bellevue to Brooklyn(snip)
At Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, where Craig A. Spencer, the doctor who contracted the Ebola virus, was being treated on the seventh floor, anxiety spread along the corridors. The news that a highly trained doctor had failed to protect himself against the disease had some employees so worried that a few nurses sought to opt out of working on that floor, said Georgiana Ochilly, 59, a veteran nurse there.
“We’re wondering how Ebola is being spread. Is it airborne? There is a lot of concern about it,” said Ms. Ochilly, of St. Albans, Queens, who was finishing a 12-hour shift around 8:30 a.m.
Ms. Ochilly, who works mostly with newborn babies, said she was also concerned that the staff in general was not ready to confront Ebola. She said that she had not been offered any training on dealing with the disease until Thursday morning.
“I don’t think they are prepared yet for the situation,” she said of the hospital, contradicting the pronouncements of Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that the city’s hospitals stand ready to handle Ebola patients.
(snip)
the 100.3 temperature it what Spencer self-reported.. I have not heard what his actual temperature was upon arrival at the hospital.. (If I had to guess I would say that is the 103 originally mentioned)
I wonder several things: